


The Life-Changing Discovery of the Girl in the Snow

by masscreativity



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Attack mention, F/M, I'm probably never finishing this btw, I've lost my fire, JaneDirk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-03-16 16:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3494834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masscreativity/pseuds/masscreativity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you first saw her, you just walked past. That’s how out of place she was in the bank of snow beside the sidewalk. She looked like she belonged bundled up in a feather bed with some hot chocolate and a cupcake, not out here in the far below freezing weather, with blood dripping from her nose and bruises on her exposed arms. After walking a few feet past the girl, you turned back in surprise and ran over to her. How different your life would have been if you wouldn't have turned back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Are you okay?

When you first see her, you just walk past. That’s how out of place she is in the bank of snow beside the sidewalk. She looks like she belongs bundled up in a feather bed with some hot chocolate and a cupcake, not out here in the far below freezing weather, with blood dripping from her nose and bruises on her (for some reason) exposed arms. After walking a few feet past the girl, you turn back in surprise and run over to her, kneeling down as the weight of the situation hits you. You mentally konk yourself on the skull for walking past her, but you’re on your way home from the tech lab and you’d already been walking for some time, plus it’s cold as all get out, so maybe your brain wasn’t working at it’s normal mechanic high speed whir.  
“Hey, are you okay?” You ask her in consternation, shaking her a little. She doesn’t stir. Now that you’re closer, you can see that there is blood on her full lips too. Her button nose is bright red and her small hands are a shade of blue that hands should not be. Her clothes are a mess and her dark, thick, soft curls- well, they look soft at least- are all over the place. She’s soaked to the core and there’s even ice forming on her clothes in places. You look her over for a moment furrowing your brows and wondering what to do with the situation. You don’t have your phone on you and you can’t call 911. She’s a total stranger, would she be freaked out if you took her back to your place? There’s a thin dusting of fresh snow covering her, she’s obviously been out here for a while. She probably already has hypothermia and she just looks so delicate and- oh screw it. You couldn’t live with yourself if you left her out here like this. You brush her off and sit her up, sliding off her soaked coat and replacing it with your own. You scoop her up bridal style, holding her close in hopes of maybe keeping her a little warm as you trek back to your apartment.  
In about fifteen minutes of shivering and chattering teeth and pulse-checking, you’re home. You lay her down in your guest bed and strip off her sweater (She’s wearing a tank top underneath, you wouldn’t want to violate her like that). Before you can pull on your hoodie over the short, curvy frame (You can’t help but notice she has quite the figure), you notice that she also has bruises all over her wide hips and collar-bone area. This concerns you, and after you put your hoodie on her, you try to wake her again. You shake her and draw in a sharp breath as she winces. You feel terrible about hurting her and go back to trying to warm her up. After a few minutes, you’ve successfully tucker her under every single blanket you own and you have two space heaters blowing on her. You take a moment to look her over. She’s now under a foot and a half of blankets and all that pokes out is her nose and up. You marvel at the thick, dark lashes resting on the crest of her pudgy, flushed cheeks. Man, she really does look like a doll. You wonder what color her eyes are. That doesn’t matter right now though, and you mentally konk yourself on the head again for getting side tracked. You stand and head into your room to search for a pair of socks that might work on her tiny feet.


	2. The Stranger with the Stupid Glasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who is that, why are you in his house, and why is he wearing sunglasses indoors?

You come to slowly and all you know at first is that you’re hot and soaked. When your eyelids flutter open, all you can see are the tons of blankets stacked on top of you and pulled up to your nose. You turn your head with a sharp wince and bring a small hand to your pounding forehead. Where in tarnation? You’ve never seen this room before. You can barely think through your crippling pain and you think you might overheat but you can’t move to kick the covers off. Did your attacker bring you home and get you all snuggly…? Just then, someone comes into the room holding a pair of socks. He’s quite a strapping young lad, but muscular in a lean, kind of scrawny way. It looks like he used to spend alot of time in the sun from the faded sun kiss on his skin and the thousands of freckles peppered across his cheeks and shoulders. He’s quite attractive, aside from the ridiculous angular sunglasses perched on his sharp nose. He’s in his own house, why on earth would he wear- oh well. To each his own. He doesn’t seem to notice that you’re awake, and he walks over to the foot of the bed looking determined. he pushes the blankets up over your small bare feet and hold on, is he going to put those socks on you?  
“Excuse me?” You scold, curling your toes. He jumps a tiny bit and looks up at you, regaining his composure almost instantaneously.  
“Finally awake? How do you feel?” He asks you, like you aren’t a total stranger and he wasn’t just trying to put socks on you while you were unconscious.  
“Kind of awful. It’s dreadfully hot and I can barely move,” You reply. “And umm- may I ask who you are and what I’m doing in your house…?”  
He pulls a few blankets off of you, tossing them aside while he speaks, “I’m Dirk. Dirk Strider. And I found you all beaten up and knocked out in the snow on my way home from work. You were bleeding and half-way to popsicle and I couldn’t just leave you there.”  
“Oh,” Is all you say, still a bit confused. Is this exceptionally attractive blonde the one who attacked you…? Something tells you he’s being honest with you, but you’re still a little scared. Naturally, of course, waking up in a stranger’s home after being knocked out from behind.  
“You have bruises all over your arms and stomach. Do you want dry clothes? I put a sweatshirt on you but I thought it might freak you out if I changed your clothes. Also before you flip out, no, I didn’t do this to you. As I said, I found you like this.”  
“Yeah, dry clothes would be nice. And thank you,” You say, smiling half-heartedly. He leaves for a moment and comes back with a T-shirt and some sweat pants. He sets them next to you and pauses, staring you in the face. You think he’s staring at you at least, you can’t see his eyes behind those silly sunglasses. After a few seconds, he snaps out of it and speaks.  
“Do you need help? If not, I’ll be in the kitchen, so just yell for me if you need anything.”  
You sit up slowly, grimacing at the pain you’ve caused yourself by doing so. You probably do need help, but you’re very self conscious of your body and you don’t want this- what was his name? Dirk- to see it. You shake your head. “I’ll be fine, thank you.”  
He nods and turns to head out.  
“Wait!” He stops. “I didn’t tell you my name yet. I’m Jane Crocker, twenty-one. Well, twenty-two in april. Pleased to make your acquaintance, I do hope we get along alright.”  
He thinks for a moment. “I think we will, we’re pretty close in age. I turned twenty-two in December,” There’s a little awkward pause after that, and he nods again before heading out and going downstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay it's just gonna be fluffy-ish relationship building for a bit so....


	3. Noodle Friend Lunch Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk makes ramen and oogles over Jane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of update yesterday, I was a little busy.

You leave the room and head down the hall, into the kitchen to make some lunch for the both of you. You’re physically incapable of making anything other than instant ramen, and you hope she isn’t any sort of food savvy. As you set the kettle boiling and you drop a cake of dried noodles into each bowl, you think. Blue, is what you think first, her eyes are blue. And a freaking amazing shade of blue at that. She’s your age too, so you don’t feel weird thinking she’s pretty cute. You hear a few little whimpers coming from the guest bedroom.  
“Hey, you alright?” You call, a tiny spot of worry in your voice. There’s a pause before she replies.  
“Yeah!” She sounds pretty okay, so you just continue on with your business. She seems awfully sweet. Crap, you hope you don’t end up hurting her somehow. You tend to do that. You’re a cagey jerk with tons and tons explosive pent up emotion. You’ve lived alone for most of your life, even before you moved here from Texas for work, your bro was barely ever home, so you never learned how cohabitation works. A little wave of unease passes over you as you think about what might happen if this assumedly caring new room mate of yours enquired of your emotional state. You’d probably end up lying to her and then it’d backfire and you’d both get hurt, blah blah blah. You’ve had alot of experience with that sort of thing, hurting people who’re just trying to help. The kettle starts to whistle and you pour water into both of your bowls, putting in the broth powder packet and them with plates. You lean back against the counter and sigh, looking up. What’ve you gotten yourself into? You know nothing about this girl. What if she’s a criminal or something? ...Okay, there’s no way she’s a criminal. It’s impossible to look as innocent as she does and be a criminal. But anyways, you have no idea what her living situation is, if she’s single, if she has a job, what that job is, etc.. You’ve barely even spoken to her, but she’s going to be living with you. Screw it, you think. What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe you two’ll really hit it off and you’ll finally get yourself a significant other. You still don’t even know if she’s single, you can’t be thinking like that.  
After about three minutes, you take both of your bowls of ramen and walk to your guest bedroom and knock.  
“Are you decent?” you ask.  
“Come on in,” she chimes, sounding cheery, despite her situation. You open the door, balancing both bowls of ramen on one arm like a freaking ninja. She’s sitting up in bed, leaning back against half of the blankets you gave her. She’s smiling and her bright, clear blue eyes are all alight and friendly, even though they have dark bags under them. She has her hands folded neatly on her blanketed lap and her thick curls are still a sticky mess, but there’s something endearing about that. There’s also something endearing about the fact that she’s wearing your T-shirt it fits her funny because of your drastically different bodies. It’s very loose around the shoulders, the V-neck hanging loosely off of one of her bruised shoulders, tight and straining around her chest, loose at her waist and tight again at her hips and tummy. You come in and set the noodles on the night stand. saying “I made lunch, I’ll be right back.” You leave and return a short moment later with a chair, which you scoot up next to the head of the bed so you can talk to her while you two eat.   
She reaches out her shaky hands for her soup, and you just set it on her lap. You wouldn’t want her spilling scolding hot chicken broth all over herself after an incident like this one.   
“Oh, thank you! I love ramen. Quite a common lunch in my household. The bakery doesn’t pay too well,” she chuckles, digging in. You dig in aswell, two questions answered; she isn’t a cooking savvy and she works in a bakery. There’s a little pause and it’s kind of awkward, honestly.


	4. All you have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane really has no choice but to stay with Dirk, especially after losing her job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gahh sorry for not updating for so long! I've been pretty busy recently with some medical issues.

“So, tell me about yourself,” you say to the freckled man, who’s already digging into his noodles. You watch him for a moment, his eyes are just visible over the tops of his sunglasses. they’re this brilliant shade of orange, and you hope to be able to see more of them in the future. They are quite unusual though, perhaps that’s why he covers them up?   
“There’s not much to tell you. I work in a tech lab down the street, I’m twenty-two as you know, I’m originally from Texas, that’s about it,” he doesn’t look up from his noodles as he talks, and he’s kind of slurping and it’s kind of gross. Oh well, you’ll excuse it.   
“What about you?” He looks up now, and you can tell he’s staring you straight in the eyes even though you can’t see his eyes, and it makes you shiver. “What do you do?”  
“Well, I work in a bakery, as you know. You know how old I am, too. Hmm…” It’s hitting you just now how boring your life is. Your life is basically work, television/video games, sleep. “Well, my life is terribly boring. I don’t really do all that much aside from work. I have to work alot of hours in order to keep myself afloat. Wait, oh my.” Your heart skips a beat in a bad way as you remember something, “shucks.”   
“What’s so horrible that you have to use such strong language? Tone it down a notch, Jane.”   
“What day is it?”  
“Wednesday. Man, you really must have gotten a really hard knock on the head.”   
“Oh crap.” you can feel your stomach bottom out, and you sigh. “Do you have a phone I can borrow? I need to call my boss.”   
He hands you his phone and you dial the bakery’s number quickly. You give Dirk a dismissive nod and he stands and walks out.   
\--   
A few minutes later, you call Dirk back in. Your voice is timid and scared. He sits down, folds his hands and looks at you, concerned.   
“What’s up?”  
“Well…” Your face sinks a little. “This was a big day for the bakery, there was a party we were supposed to cater for. It was gonna be a big money maker, and they wanted this certain type of cupcake that only I can make. So naturally, me not being there was a huge issue…” you look down, and then back up at him. You give him your best puppy-dog face, complete with pleading eyes and pouty lips. He looks almost taken aback by the face.   
“You got fired?” he asks. You nod pitifully and he huffs. “It’s okay. I wasn’t going to ask you for any money, anyways. I have a feeling the tech lab pays way better than whatever you were doing.”   
You smile gratefully and lay your head back on the pillow again. You open your mouth to speak, but-  
“Don’t you dare apologize about this, either. It’s far from your fault. Plus, I really don’t mind having a roomie.”   
“Thank you,” you sigh. A sad look crosses your face as you stare at your empty bowl. You have no idea what you’re going to do once you recover now. You have no idea how long it’ll take, either, and that scares you. It could be months, even.   
“You alright, Crocker?” You snap out of it and turn to Dirk.  
“Huh? Yeah, I’m just…” you pause, looking down again. “I’m just kind of scared. My job was kind of my life…” another heavy sigh escapes you, and Dirk mirrors this.   
“You wanna go watch some TV or something? I have a crap ton of ice cream in my freezer. This seems like an icecream and parks and rec. moment,” he stands as he speaks. “Can you walk, or should I carry you again?”  
You laugh, thinking he’s joking. But as you start to stand, and your legs buckle and give out under you and send you back onto the bed, you start to think it might have been a valid offer. You look up at him helplessly, and he chuckles warmly. He scoops you up bridal style, holding you close, “Upsy-daisy, little lady.”   
\--  
The two of you are on the couch now, watching parks and rec. happily. He’s at one end with his feet up on the ottoman and his arm up on the back of the couch, and you’re at the other end with your legs stretched out across his lap. He’s tucked you both into this lovely duvet, and you think it’s the best blanket you’ve ever seen. He has a hand resting affectionately on your leg. This whole situation is kind of really weird, honestly. You guys just met earlier today, is it okay to be this snuggly already? I mean, something tells you you can trust this guy with your life. Something tells you he’s a good person, and that he’ll take good care of you. He’s really all you have now, anyways.


	5. The Worst Vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s Saturday morning, and you’re in bed with Jane Crocker.

It’s Saturday morning, and you’re in bed with Jane Crocker. No, nothing exciting happened last night, you’re both completely clothed. Her arms are around your neck though, and you really hope you’re laying in a position that isn’t hurting her. She’s sleeping too heavily for you to tell. What got you in this position, one might ask? She fell asleep during your marathon last night and wouldn’t let go of you when you tried to deposit her into the guest bed. So you had to resort to sleeping with her. It’s terribly humiliating really. You hate being snuggled up to this small, soft, warm, adorable person. Yeah. Despise it.  
She seems to be a heavy sleeper, because it’s eleven am by now, and she’s still out. You are so glad you don’t work today, because if you did, you’d be screwed. Light pours in from the window above the guest bed, and you’re surprised it hasn’t woken her, it’s very bright. It’s shining right on her face, too. You can’t help but notice the way it radiates softly off of her perfect porcelain complexion. It looks almost as if she’s producing the light. You know that’s crazy talk, but she looks so angelic when she’s sleeping, bioluminescence wouldn’t be too far fetched.   
You’re so engrossed in her soft features that you barely notice your alarm going of in your pocket. Crap, did you set it for the wrong day? You pull your phone out of your pocket, and after a moment of studying the screen, swear under your breath. ‘Work, Thursday, 11:15’, reads the memo on the alarm. It isn’t Saturday. Normally you wouldn’t mind getting up for work, you actually really enjoy working in the tech lab. You get to do what you love, and plus, it takes your mind off of… things. But there’s a problem, and that problem is snoozing quietly on your chest.   
You can’t just wake her, that would be cruel. It’d be like shaking a sleeping, injured kitten and being like ‘hey, I need you to wake up so I can leave you alone all day even though you can’t even sit up by yourself’. You sigh heavily as you turn off the two other alarms you have set, and then you glare up at the ceiling. You can’t just leave her either, what’s she supposed to do? She can’t even get up and go pee by herself. She seems stubborn as a mule though, so she’d most likely try to take care of herself, and you’d come home to her being even more injured. Poor thing. She doesn’t have a phone on her either, so she couldn’t contact you if something happened.  
...Well, there’s really only one thing to do, then. You really wanted to fly up to Texas this year, but… It can’t be helped now. You pick your phone up again and open up the contacts app, and the tap on your boss, and the little green ‘call’ button. Whenever a call is exchanged between the two of you, it’s normally her calling you, because she’s kind of demanding of you and you don’t really like talking to her.   
“Hello, Denver Technology, how may I help you?”  
“Hey, yeah, it’s Dirk,” You sound like you really don’t want to be making this phone call, because you don’t.  
“Oh, hello Mr. Strider. What’s going on?”  
“I’m going to go on vacation. Starting today. I’ll probably have to use all of my vacation days, sorry. Some… personal issues came up, and there’s no way I can come in.”  
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. It must be a bummer to have to use your vacation days in the middle of the winter. I hope whatever’s going on works itself out, and I’ll see you back at work when you can come. Buh-bye,” and she hangs up. She’s a busy woman, what can you say? Not that you wanted to talk to her any longer anyways.  
It really is a bummer, because in all honesty, you don’t want to spend your vacation being a care taker. Maybe Jane’s recovery will be more rapid than either of you assume, you can take her home, and you can be back to work in a week or so?...Yeah. That isn’t going to happen. Heck, you don’t even know where she lives. 

\--  
You’re close to falling asleep again when you feel jane stir, and then hear her whine. Crap, maybe you do have her in a bad position. “  
“Are you alright?” you ask her, looking down. She still has her face buried in your chest, so it’s hard to tell. She nods feebly, but it doesn’t seem like an honest reply. Maybe she’s too tired to tell the truth. The case is actually that she just doesn’t like showing people the fact that she’s in pain, or accepting help, which you’re starting to see. She’s still for a moment, before she tenses up, and rolls off you. It’s obvious from the look on her face that she hurt herself by doing that, and you have no idea why the heck she did.   
“What’s wrong?” you ask.  
“You’re in my bed?” it sounds more like a question than a statement. Oops.   
“You wouldn’t let go of me last night, it’s not my fault,” she huffs playfully, and then chuckles a little. “And oh, Jane. I forgot to ask you. Where do you-- or did you- live?”  
She looks a bit confused, cocking her head to the side, “What do you mean? We’re still in Seattle, aren’t we?” Your heart drops. Your mouth flaps helplessly as you look for some reply, but none comes, not for a few more moments. The look of worry grows on her face as your reply doesn’t come.   
“Jane,” you start, and you’re starting to feel more worried about her than you had ever been before. “We’re in Colorado.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WEATHER IN COLORADO I JUST NEEDED TO PICK A STATE  
> Also, sorry for the long pause. I'm going through alot of medical stuff right now, so writing is really difficult for me.

**Author's Note:**

> First of many chapters. Whoo wee this is gonna be a long 'en. I'll be switching POV from Dirk to Jane and back and forth every chapter, just stating that now to clear up any possible confusion. The chapters will be pretty short, I think it would be better to break chapters more often so we can have a solid Dirk chapter, a solid Jane chapter, a solid Dirk chapter, and so on and so forth.


End file.
